A handful of Jan. 6 defendants and Trump supporters, some of whom spent time behind bars for their role in the 2021 insurrection, again marched on the Capitol on Tuesday, flanked by a former Proud Boys leader that the Justice Department once cast as a mastermind behind the riots.
The event was advertised ostensibly as a memorial procession for Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by authorities as she attempted to breach an interior door at the Capitol that day. In a December post on X, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio called on his followers to join the “PATRIOTIC and PEACEFUL” march to remember Babbitt, five years after the attack on the Capitol, aimed at thwarting the installation of Joe Biden as president.
“Five years ago a beautiful life was taken from us. A veteran and a patriot. So I ask those that are able to attend please do so,” he wrote. “Justice has NOT been served.”
Tuesday’s march — which started around noon at the Ellipse, where five years ago Trump urged attendees to “fight like hell” — paled in comparison to the procession of thousands that swarmed Washington and ultimately breached the Capitol in 2021.
A group of maybe three dozen people, who included Tarrio and Babbitt’s mother Micki Witthoeft, marched to little fanfare. They were surrounded by members of the press and police, who at times seemed to outnumber them. Some carried signs, reading “THANK YOU FOR OUR PARDONS TRUMP” or “J6 Was An Inside Job.” The group inspired jeers from several onlookers, one of whom yelled “Ashli Babbitt’s a terrorist.” Another detractor, carrying a megaphone, shoved and screamed her way through the crowd, and was temporarily detained by nearby officers.
Midway through the march, the group stopped at a fence on the perimeter of the Capitol to deliver speeches. Tarrio was the keynote speaker, and though he began by “honoring the memory of Ashli Babbitt,” he spent most of his stage time decrying the Biden administration for “torturing” him and the Jan. 6 defendants with prison time.
“A year ago many of us were sitting in a jail cell trying to figure out whether we were gonna get pardoned. We trusted the president, but we had to think about it … were we gonna spend the next two decades of our life in here, for a lie?”
The event served as a redemption arc of sorts for Tarrio, who was convicted in 2023 — alongside several other Proud Boys leaders — on charges that included seditious conspiracy, a rare count generally reserved for foreign terrorists acting on American soil. Though Tarrio wasn’t in Washington for the insurrection, the DOJ described Tarrio as leading the riots “from afar” by recruiting attendees and directing the movements of hundreds of Proud Boys who laid siege on the Capitol.
“Today, the leader of the Proud Boys … learned that the consequence of conspiring to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power is 22 years in federal prison,” said former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland following Tarrio’s sentencing.
But for the Proud Boys, and some 1,270 rioters convicted over Jan. 6, the consequences were short-lived. Trump granted blanket clemency to the lot of them last year after he took office for the second time. The march on Tuesday was as much a victory lap for those defendants as it was a memorial for Babbitt.
“I’m filled with anticipation and joy, eagerly anticipating a reunion with my J6 family, my brothers and sisters, who’ve been strengthened by trials and redeemed by God, and shown mercy by Trump,” reads a Facebook post on Jan. 5 by Shane Jenkins, a rioter who was sentenced to seven years in prison for assaulting a police officer. After his pardon, Jenkins scored a visit to the White House.
The march was also a test of strength for the MAGA movement, which hasn’t been able to gather supporters en masse at public events since the DOJ’s crackdown on Jan. 6 rioters began — at least, not in the way they did during Trump’s first term, when massive (and often violent) processions hosted by the Proud Boys and other far-right groups were a near-weekly spectacle across the country.
That cooling effect has been particularly hard on the Proud Boys organization, once celebrated on the right as Trump’s unofficial and extrajudicial enforcement arm, against antifa, the Black Lives Matter movement or whichever conservative grievance took the spotlight during Trump’s first term. Today the far-right street gang rarely gathers in large groups, instead latching onto local far-right events via their dwindling national network of chapters.
It’s not clear what Tarrio’s public appearance on Tuesday might mean for the organization going forward. He’s claimed to have cut ties with the Proud Boys, though he appears regularly alongside members and affiliated live streamers on social media. Tarrio didn’t immediately respond to MS NOW’s calls for comment.
